karma yoga

Karma: seems I’ve heard this word bandied about most of my life. Good karma, bad karma: your life reflects your actions, you are what you eat, you reap what you sew. The word also carries the implication that the results of our actions can carry over from life to life. I don’t know anything about that particular detail. I do know that how I choose to act in this moment has clear repercussions in the day-to-day quality of my life. My contentment is a reflection of how I act. In the 12-step tradition there is a phrase “acting as if” that reminds us that action transforms us faster than thought.: we become our actions. What do we want to become?

Our yoga may begin on our mats. We show up in yoga class, breath, stretch, strengthen, and become aware of ourselves as incarnate being. We have bodies. Paying attention to the sensation of the body our spirit can change. For me, paying attention and practicing yoga not only reduced the pain that brought me to my mat, it calmed something deep in my center. It calmed my heart and my spirit in a way that nothing else had. I stopped seeking self-fulfillment through external sources, be that objects or external approval and gratification. I started to realize that being of service in the world was my personal path to contentment and freedom.

My personal path of service is teaching. I teach my public yoga classes that many of you attend. And I regularly teach in a service setting. Currently I’m teaching at an alcohol and drug recovery center for mothers with young children. I’ve taught in middle school alternative classrooms and to low income teenagers. While I’m bringing what I know to these classes, I learn an incredible amount there. Sometimes these classes don’t feel like a traditional yoga class at all. No one can settle down or everyone just wants to sleep. We listen to their rooms being searched while we practice or there is a fire alarm. Someone is in crisis as the court threatens to remove a child from the home or or the student herself has been removed from her home. Now we really practice yoga although it may look nothing like the yoga in the videos. We find an asana, a spiritual seat, at the center of the storm. And we look to find ourselves amidst the crisis. We seek a voice and the action that knows how to proceed in times of trouble.

This is yoga: the yoking of the self to a greater self. Yes, yoga is physical exercise, but not only the physical exercise. It is giving oneself to the greater good. It is making the world a more peaceful place by being a more peaceful person. It is about standing up and getting angry when that is the only appropriate response. It is about listening to each cell in your body and acting from that deep inherent knowledge. It is about listening to the people and the world around you. It is about being a right sized being on this beautiful planet. It is about acting without the expectation of a reward.

vacation

My turn, I'm off for vacation much of this next month. I'll be practicing yoga and dance in the high Sierra and on a dusty lakebed. See you in September,

Rest Stop Yoga: Sleep

You've been traveling for hours. You unfold your body from the cramped car and walk to the motel reception desk. You wiggle and stretch while you wait for help. Pour your weight from leg to leg. Lift up on your toes. Shake. Then head to your room and unpack. You lie down exhausted but unable to rest. Here are some tips for getting the rest you need:

1) Don't drink too much caffeine. Obvious but true. You probably already know your personal limit. Stick with it. Use asana (yoga postures) as a pick-me-up instead.

2) Eat well. Yes, let yourself have a treat. Enjoy the local offerings. But make sure you get your vegies, fruit, and fiber.

3) Take a nice long walk before you settle in at that motel. Move the big muscles of your legs. Do some big arm circles. Get a bit of real movement back into your muscles, fibers and bones.

4) Get outdoors during midday daylight. Wear shorts and get sunlight on your legs and the back of your knees. Your bodies clock will more easily shut down at night when it clear what day is.

When it is time to settle in to sleep turn off the TV and reduce visual and auditory stimulation as much as possible. Listen to your breath and your heartbeat. Do a body scan ~ tuning into each muscle, each bone, each limb, all of you. Wiggle and stretch then tense and relax. Repeat the body scan an the tense/release cycles until you feel tension dissolve.

Focused Relaxation of the nervous system: Alternate Nostril Breath
This is fabulous way to relax and calm the nervous system quickly. Begin in a comfortable seated or prone position. Rest the first and middle finger of your non-dominant hand on your forehead. Bring your thumb and ring finger to rest on either side of the nose near the transition from nasal cartilage to nasal bone (about mid way along the length of the nose). Take a few long smooth breaths. At the end of an exhalation gently close the right nostril with the pressure of your finger or thumb and inhale through your left nostril. Then close the left nostril and exhale through the right nostril. Inhale through the right then close it and exhale through the left. Inhale left, close, exhale right. Inhale right, close, exhale left. Continue the pattern exhaling and inhaling on one side, then switching to the other nostril.

After a few minutes you may find that you can do the alternate nostril breath without using your hands. Your intention will guide the breath from one side to the other. If you can find the focus and sensation of this you may lay back and continue and not even notice you have fallen asleep.

About five minutes of alternate nostril breath will soothe and balance your nervous system. You can use this as often as you like. I find it particularly effective in the middle of the night to calm the incessant chatter of an anxious mind and get me back to sleep readily.

zzzzzzzzzzz

Road Stop Yoga: Utthita Pandangustasana

Time to unfurl your body from that seat again. Open up the front of your body to make more room for breath, life and possibility. Take a nice long yoga break before you get back in the car!



















Utthita Pandangustasana I:

You'll want a park bench, planter, or even your bumper as a prop for this exercise.

Stand alongside the bench and lift your foot up and out onto the bench surface. The leg will be extended to the side about 45 degrees. Turn your toes and your knee toward the sky. If your hamstrings are tight you'll want your lifted knee more bent than mine is in the photo. Lift and engage from your pelvic floor and abdominal muscles. Then spread your arms broad and open your upper chest. Take a few deep breaths. You can turn your head gently from side to side.

















Add a Backbend:

Same pose, lacing your fingers together behind your back. Extend your arms and lift them away from your back. Lift your heart and upper chest. This is the 'chest expander' variation ~ so take some big full breaths and stretch out the front of your rib cage.

Keep the back of your neck long and comfortable if you choose to turn your gaze upward.

A deeper leg stretch:

Lift the leg onto a higher surface to increase the stretch in your hamstring muscles. Continue to keep the toes and the knee facing skyward, the hips level, the abdominal muscles and pelvic floor engaged. You can twist your chest away from the lifted leg and lace an arm behind your back with the hand resting on your lifted thigh.

Hold the pose for 4 to 8 breath cycles as you like.


Parsva Utthita Pandangustasana:

To add a side stretch rreach your arm down your lifted leg. You can catch the hand wherever it reaches while maintaining good alignment: knee, shin, ankle or foot. Keep turning your chest away from your lifted leg. Try to keep both the left and right sides of your spine equally long as you bend to the side. Use your drishti, steady gaze, to help your balance.








Unlace the hand from behind your back and lift your arm overhead. Feel this stretch all the way up the open side of your body. Breathe into your extended waist and rib cage. Enjoy the pose for 4 to 8 breath cycles.

As a final spine stretch you can arc the spine over the lifted leg (not shown). If the chest turns down toward the leg you'll enhance your hamstring stretch; if you continue to turn the chest upward (as if you were to lay your spine onto your lifted leg) You'll stretch the sides of the spine in the deep low back.


Once you've completed the poses on one side of your body, repeat them on the opposite side. If you have time, do each side twice through. Then keep this energy of the opening of the front of your body when it's time to return to traveling.

Namaste,
Lisa

Rest Stop Yoga: Hips and Shoulders!

We're futher along in the journey, the stiffness has deepened and we needs some deeper stretches. Oh, and the only prop at this roadside stand is a pole. So here's a way to stretch:

Poledog!

Take your arms up the pole over your head. Step back and let your head rest between your arms. Lift your sitting bones up and allow a gentle arch in the low back. Bend and extend the knees softly. Let your head and neck undulate moving from side to side. Rock your low back. Let the kinks flow out of the body. Switch your arm position so that each hand has a chance to rest on top of the other.

Engage your lower abdominal muscles and pelvic floor, then bend your knees and step toward the pole to come out of the pose.


Knee and Quad Stretch


Stand beside the pole and hold the pole to help with balance. Bend a knee and catch your ankle with your hand. Lift your heal toward your outer hip or buttock to stretch your knee deeply. Keep the lift of your belly, chest and heart. Holding a steady gaze will further support your balance.





Now press your foot into your hand and rotate your thigh bone backward in the hip socket to extend at the hip. Keep engaging your abdominal muscles so that you belly button reaches toward your spine and you resist the tendency to rotate your hips forward.

The stretch will move from your knee into your Quadracep (front thigh) and Hip flexor muscles. The deeper you are able to work your abs the more you will be able to extend the stretch into those hip flexors. Hip flexors get both lax and shortened by extended periods of sitting. Stretching them out will go along way toward having a healthy and happy low back.

Repeat the knee and hip flexor stretch on both sides a few times.

Pectorals and Upper Back:

Reach one arm up the pole. Ground through your feet and reach through your arm. Then slowly turn your body away from the pole and your arm. You'll be stretching from the sternum up through the shoulder and armpit and all along the underside of the arm. You can slowly turn your head right and left to enhance the stretch in your neck muscles as well.








Walk your hand slowly down the pole as you turn your body away. As you move the arm through its rotation from over head to by your side, the stretch will move through various bands of muscle and connective tissue. Linger where the stretch feels especially good.

When you've finished one side stand tall in tadasana. Let your arms hang free and close your eyes. Relish the sense of openness in your shoulder. Then turn and stretch the other side.

Rest Stop Yoga: Twists

You've put a few more miles in, but perhaps you haven't gotten to your destination yet. You need some quick relief before you head back into the car. Twists are a great quick relief for your back, your spine, your belly, and your neck.

Pavritta Trikonasana: Revolving Triangle

Stand facing the back of a bench and take a wide stride with right foot back. Your left foot will face the bench and your right foot will be slightly turned out. Place your left hand on your left hip and reach for the back of the bench with your right forearm. Engage your deep abdominal muscles and lift your pelvic floor muscles as you slowly revolve your spine to the left, over the front leg. Keep your upper chest broad and don't over twist your neck. If it feels good you can gently turn your head left and right as you remain in the pose.

Hold the position for 3 to 10 breaths and repeat on both sides two or three times.


Pavritta Utthita Anjanyasana: Revolved Standing Lunge

Stand behind the bench about two or three feet and lift your right foot up onto the bench back. Your lifted knee is bent to hip height, or higher. Your standing knees is soft and open, not locked.

Take your right hand to your right hip and your left forearm across to the outside of the lifted right knee. Gently press the right forearm into the outer knee as you revolve your chest to the right over the lifted leg. You can use as much strength as feels appropriate in the arm to bring the twist up into your rib cage. Feel how your breath opens up the ribs and the upper spine and allows you to deepen the twist with each inhalation.

As above, keep your neck mobile and easy and your core muscles gently engaged. Repeat the twist on both sides, as many times as you like. You can hold the twist for a few breaths or slowly move into and out of the twist with the flow of your breath.

If you feel ready for a little deeper twist, hook your opposite elbow onto the lifted knee. The work of the upper arm pressing into the lifted knee will allow you to deepen the stretch in both the lower back and in the ribs and upper spine. Keep broadening your chest as you twist. You can brings your hands together into Anjali Mudra (prayer hands) and turn your sternum toward your thumbs.

If lifting the leg to the bench back feels too high, you can do these same twists with the lifted leg on the seat of the bench instead.

Happy trails!

Rest Stop Yoga: Pigeon Stretches

You unfold your body from the cramped car seat. You wiggle and stretch and walk a bit but still your low back is aching. Here are three versions of a classic stretch to ease low back pain. I consider all of these variations of Pigeon Pose: Kapotasana. In Pigeon Pose the upper leg bone is externally rotated and the knee is bent. Most people feel this stretch in the outer hip and deep hip rotators (between the sacrum and hip) Experiment and see which variation works best for your body. And don't save this stretch for travel. It is just as effective in your office in the middle of a long work day!

Seated Pigeon: Sit upright on a bench or chair. Feet flat on the floor and parallel. Then bring one ankle to the opposite knee, ideally your lifted foot rests outside the knee rather than on the thigh. While you are sitting up tall encourage the knee of the lifted leg to gently drop away from your chest, thus increasing the external rotation of the thigh and opening up the groins. Do not force the knee, if you feel knee pain you've gone too far.

If you have the flexiblity, gently fold at the hips to take your heart toward your shin. Keep some engagement in your deep abdominals.

Repeat on both sides, as many times as feels good.

Feel ready for a bigger stretch? Try the next variation:

Leaning Pigeon: Stand a foot or two away from a bench. Bending one knee toward your chest, turn the thigh outward and bring the outside of the lifted foot to the bench in front of your standing thigh. Continue to rotate the lifted thigh outward gently letting your knee fall toward the bench seat. Lean forward and place your hands on the bench back and form a plank with your body: ankles, hips and shoulders in a line. You'll want to continue to engage your deep abdominal and pelvic floor muscles and lengthen the sides of your waist and your spine.

In this variation you may get a deeper hip stretch than in the seated variation, along with a stretch of the Achilles Tendon in the standing leg and some strengthening in the core torso muscles.

Standing Pigeon: The hip stretch becomes even deeper if you bring the shin onto a surface at hip height.

All the same cues apply: outwardly rotate at the hip; don't force the knee down; use the lift of your pelvic floor muscles and deep abdominals to lengthen your spine. Breathe.

You might practice this variation with your leg on a picnic table or planter, your hotel room bed, or any surface. Try different heights to find where you can maximize your body's response.

To take the stretch even further, take your hands on either side of the lifted foot and knee onto the surface your shin is resting upon, lean gently forward taking your heart toward your shin. You'll find the limit of your flexibility, don't push toward the very edge. Stay where the stretch feels optimal.

Once you've completed whatever version of pigeon is right for your body, walk around some, then move onto the bench variations of dog pose found in the last post.

Namaste,
Lisa